Philipp Meyer - The Son

I ATTEMPTED TO tend to Charles’s arm but he pushed me away. It appeared to be birdshot.

“Let me look at it,” I said.

“It doesn’t even hurt yet.” Then, as if I had some disease, he would not allow me any closer.

Inside the house, it looked as if workmen had been called to perform a demolition. Or vandals let into a museum. Antique furniture shot to pieces, upholstery shredded and the stuffing spilled as if the house had been invaded by a swarm of birds, ancient dark paintings of matriarchs and patriarchs, a Byzantine portrait of Christ, antique quilts, sketches, weapons, crosses, all punctured or smashed or knocked onto the floor. An illuminated Bible, the pride of Pedro’s family, fallen from its place in the altarcito and splayed open in the plaster.

In the living room I counted five dead men and one dead woman, shot so many times that every drop of blood had leaked from their bodies and mixed with the splinters and dust and gutted upholstery. One looked old enough to be Pedro but when I turned him over it was Cesár, a vaquero, a man who had helped us on roundups since I was a boy. In kneeling to turn him my pants soaked through and when I stood up the fabric stuck darkly to my legs.

Underneath one of the sofas something caught my eye: a young girl in a blue dress. Next to her a boy of six or eight, dead as well. By then a barricade had gone up between my eyes and mind; I saw them with scientific interest; here was the blood, there were the holes. Smaller details: standing pools of bright crimson, handprints and bootprints and long smears where the wounded had been dragged, bloody spray over the walls indicating some final moment, some story which would never be told. A young man with the white of his spine, another stretched out as if drunk; his brains had been spooned out onto his shirt. I saw others looking with the same cool interest; when blood does not belong to your kin it might as well be wine or water.

In the kitchen, six dead; three of Pedro’s vaqueros — Romaldo, Gregorio, and Martín — along with Pedro’s middle daughter, Carmen. Two men staring at each other over the crumpled bodies of Pedro’s twin granddaughters, the same white dresses and pigtails. The room smelled like an abattoir; blood and the musky smell of opened bellies, waste from the bodies, but there was something sweet as well — roses — which I suspected my mind had invented from a swamp of confused sensations.

I went to Pedro’s office. It was surprisingly untouched and I felt tired; I sat down in the chair opposite his desk as I had done many times. I resolved I would let the others make the necessary discoveries. Though of course that would be worse. There was no absolution. I got up and followed the scent of rosewater toward one of the bedrooms, where the door was perforated with two large holes from a shotgun, plaster dust grinding under my feet.

At the far end of the room, in the middle of his canopy bed, Pedro lay on his back as if taking a nap. The scent of rosewater was so strong I nearly retched. A small price. When I got closer I saw his face, the pillow and bedclothes stained. Something — a pair of teeth — had been knocked from his mouth. A few white feathers had settled on his face.

There had been a fight here — the back wall was pocked by bullets, the dressers and wardrobes splintered, jewelry scattered. I thought I heard Pedro speaking, but it was just a trick of my ringing ears. Near the foot of the bed lay Aná, Pedro’s youngest daughter, her church dress soaked to the waist, her back and neck arched as if she had gathered her energy to shout something. There was an old Colt Army.

Lourdes Garcia was on the other side of the bed, still gripping a Spanish fowling piece.

Just then the game warden came into the room, surveyed the damage, and told me not to touch the bodies.

“If you do not get the hell out of here,” I told him, “you will be looking for another job tomorrow.”

I straightened Aná’s skirts and placed her and Lourdes in the bed with Pedro. It was a pointless gesture. They would soon be carried outside. I left the room.

In one of the closets in another bedroom we found a woman in her thirties. She was alive. ¿Estás herida? I guessed it was María, the unmarried daughter, but her face was so filthy and bloody and her eyes so wild I couldn’t be sure. She looked at me. She submitted as I ran my fingers over her scalp and through her hair to check for wounds, then opened her shirt quickly to check front and back for the same, then closed it again, then lifted her skirts to check her hip and waist area. She was not injured. She sat dumbly as I straightened her clothes.

I led her outside and turned her over to Ike Reynolds and his sons, whom I know to be respectable. A minute later they rode off. What family she has left I don’t know; the Garcias have been in this country far longer than any of the white families. They were once proper hidalgos, having been granted this land by the king of Spain himself. Pedro never spoke of any family in Mexico; he did not think of himself as Mexican.

Outside the sun was all the way up. Charles and one of the Rangers had both been hit by birdshot, but the pellets had not gone deep. I thought of the shotgun lying next to Lourdes. I wondered if Charles had killed her, or if he had killed Pedro, or maybe Aná.

Niles Gilbert’s friend from El Paso, who had been so anxious to “naturalize” some Mexicans, had been shot through the mouth. A brief sense of satisfaction rose within me, then slipped away; he would go down a martyr. The small blond Ranger sergeant had been hit in the hand and forearm and the stock of his carbine split by a bullet.

Wounded or not, the twelve living assaulters sat dumbly on the porch, some lying on their backs, others dangling their legs over the edge, staring at the roof or into the sky. Sullivan was lifting their shirts to check them for injuries, shouting instructions into their ears. I wondered again if Charles had been the one to shoot Pedro and Lourdes, but pushed away the question a second time.

Meanwhile, the men at the wall had begun to come forward. Bill Hollis had been laid out in the shade. His brother Dutch was sitting next to him. Four others were carried over. I could tell that one was a vaquero of ours, though I did not have the heart to get up and see who it was.

A FEW HOURS later the photographer showed up. The Rangers posed with the bodies of the male Garcias, the faces shot off most of the dead men, a detail that would be lost in the printing. They would look blurred, overdirty, as the faces of all dead men do.

No one commented on the absence of Pedro’s sons-in-law. It was just as he had told us — they were not in the house. The bodies of the women and children were placed in the shade, away from their men, perhaps out of some old-fashioned impulse, perhaps so they would not show in the pictures.

Watching the photographer take pictures of townspeople posing with the Garcias — a loose queue had formed — I began to feel even more tired. I knew what anyone looking at the pictures would think, or rather not think, of the Garcias, whose remains were so matted with dust and dried blood that they were barely distinguishable from the caliche. The audience would notice only the living men, who had done a brave thing, while the dead would not even register as men. They were props — like a panther or dead buck — they had lived their entire lives in order to die for just this moment.

People from town continued to arrive, women and children now. Our vaqueros disappeared, taking the body of their fallen comrade, while the vigilantes and their wives went through the cupboards. The furniture inside the casa mayor was all quite valuable; most had come from the old country: old Spanish weapons and armor, a good deal of silver. The Garcias had once been quite wealthy and I knew when I returned I would find the house completely plundered.